


Dialation

by dialectica_esoterica



Series: Nocturne [1]
Category: The Queen's Gambit (TV)
Genre: Benny Watts POV, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Foreign Language, Possibly Unrequited Love, Power Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:33:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27602161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dialectica_esoterica/pseuds/dialectica_esoterica
Summary: Benny learns more about himself - and Beth - than he expected, seven days before she leaves for Paris.
Relationships: Beth Harmon/Benny Watts
Series: Nocturne [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2017951
Comments: 29
Kudos: 306





	Dialation

Benny knew what obsession was, and he is quite certain that his feelings for Beth Harmon _weren’t_ at the level of obsession.

Like every other too-old-to-still-be-considered-a-prodigy chess professional, Benny Watts is quite familiar with the concept of obsession. In fact, for most of his life, he was pretty sure that he couldn’t experience anything other than _obsession_ , for chess had been – and would remain to be – the thing tethering him to his reality. The World’s Hardest Game and Benny Watts are not meant to be separated; he’s confident that if he had been born into a world where chess hadn’t been invented that he would have been a different person entirely.

All this to say that Benny knows that he’s not obsessed with Beth. And this isn’t meant to be a point of denial, either, because Benny made a vow with himself to be entirely truthful within the confines of his own psyche since there’s not enough room in his tiny apartment for lies or half-truths. There’s not enough time, either. For the first time in his life, though, Benny has more than one obsession – and it’s more specific and less nebulous than “Beth Harmon.”

Benny’s obsessed with Beth Harmon’s obsession of chess. He’s completely and utterly fixated with her Ruy Lopezs, her Silians, her Caro Kanns. He’s obsessed with the way she plucks a piece with the pointer finger and thumb of her right hand, sometimes to set it down a few squares away with all the confidence and finality in the world, sometimes to roll it between her forefinger and bottom lip while she studies the board with heavy eyes. In the space between Beth’s fingers dancing across the board, Benny knows that she’ll never love anything as much as she loves this. He knows it because it’s a mirror image of himself. He knows that he could spend a thousand years competing with chess for her love and he’d lose every time. And… that’s comforting, more than anything. It means that he knows her just as well as he knows himself, even if he doesn’t even know her middle name or her birthday. It doesn’t matter. Beth and chess are a sure bet, two-thirds of their ménage à trois.

Benny’s not so poetic as to say that Beth helped him fall in love with chess all over again. It would be more accurate to say that the reverse is actually true: through chess, Benny found his love for Beth. For him, it was less about _falling_ in love, and more about lateral and horizontal and diagonal movements that found him trapped in a mating net at the end of a long, tense match. It was confirmed the first time he tasted the skin in the divot of her hipbones; the way she looked at him, expectant, when he held her pinned down below him. Beth Harmon is not his prize for winning a game of chess – she _is_ the game of chess, personified. She’s not to be possessed.

Benny, ever the pragmatist, knows that he’ll never find another person like this. He also knows that Beth is not his to keep – like lies and half-truths, she’ll never fit inside his tiny apartment. Not in the way he wants.

“Ty slushayesh?”

They’ve decided, for today, to speak only in Russian when possible – a way for Beth to prepare for the Moscow Invitational at the end of the year. Of course, she has to get through Rémy-Vallon first, but Beth said she’s not worried about her French. They both know enough rudimentary conversation, and there’s usually someone around to help translate from English if necessary. The same is not guaranteed in the Soviet Union.

“Are you listening?” she repeats in English this time, as it seems that Benny’s forgotten to respond. He shakes his head, slowly, honestly, as she looks at him with the smallest, smuggest smirk that Benny’s ever had the pleasure of seeing on a living person and not on the Mona Lisa.

“Nyet, ya dumal,” he tells her truthfully, because fuck it if Beth deserves less than the truth. Beth like this, he thinks, should be a closely-guarded secret: sprawled on the cluster of pillows that serves as a make-pretend couch, her slacks rolled up to her ankles atop bare feet, her hair falling out of its coif from the amount of times she’s run her fingers through it.

She rolls her eyes, but after living with her for three weeks Benny knows the difference between her actual exasperation and her good-natured false irritation designed to annoy him in equal measure. This is the latter. He knows because he’s propped up against the wall, ninety-degrees perpendicular to her body with her ankles draped across his lap and there’s not one tense muscle in either of her legs. He’s not exactly massaging her – they both have too much pride to let each other be babied quite like that – but he is running his fingers up and down her anklebones, just feeling. Benny’s never had a lover that he’s paid this much attention to: he thinks he could pick out her skin from a blindfolded lineup. She’s so fucking soft.

Apparently he’s forgotten to react again, because she’s laying down the copy of _Crime and Punishment_ in the original Cyrillic (when he’d enquired about why she wanted to read Dostoevsky, specifically in Russian, he was only met with a knowing smile) that she’d been reading aloud. Instead of inquiring about his lack of attention, she leans forward (the book slides further down her torso in the process), and slides her pointer finger across his left browbone, so softly that Benny can barely feel it; wouldn’t even know that she had moved if he hadn’t been watching her so closely even while lost in his thoughts. He can feel his eyebrow arch in question, wanting to know without asking out loud what she’s doing. She isn’t meeting his eyes, her attention focused instead on his forehead, just tracing the crease between Benny’s eyebrows that becomes a little more permanent after every chess match.

“Pochemu khmurish'sya?” she murmurs, low and slow and sultry, sultry, sultry. Beth speaks Russian – and sometimes English, too – like the words are already formed and she’s giving them just barely enough volume to travel.

“Khmurit'sya?” Benny repeats, confused. He doesn’t speak Russian as well as Beth does, only having bothered to learn conversational basics. At the time, it seemed less important than making sure his game was solid in preparation for the Soviet matches. At present, Benny is annoyed with himself for not taking the time to master the language as well as Beth seems to – like everything that they have in common, mastery of the Russian language is a race, and Benny is sorely lagging.

(If he’s honest with himself – and he is – Benny hasn’t understood most of _Crime and Punishment._ He really just likes hearing her voice.)

Instead of providing a direct translation – because this is Beth Fucking Harmon, who treats information as sacred on and off the chess board – she mimics Benny’s expression with exaggerated flair by closely knitting her eyebrows and drooping the corners of her mouth in an exaggerated pout. Benny stifles a laugh; is this how she pictures him? Grumpy and crotchety like Ebenezer Scrooge, when he’s always pictured himself in his mind’s eye as being sharply, intensely focused instead?

“I wasn’t frowning,” he tells her purposefully-blank face. Beth’s eyes skitter across his forehead, eyebrows, cheekbones, to finally meet his own gaze. “Nichego ne sluchilos,” he assures her softly, and then just to be sure he repeats himself in English: “Nothing’s wrong.”

Again, she’s several steps ahead of him, because there’s no way he can match her quiet affectation when she speaks like this, just the two of them in a shitty basement apartment on a shitty pillow-couch. Sultry Beth has a way of beginning her sentences with a barely noticeable “mmm” sound, like the pronunciation of the word “mnemonic.” Benny’s equally thrilled and annoyed with himself for noticing – for _caring_ enough to pay attention that closely, but she’s still running her fingertips so gently across his brow and it’s all so much, too much. So, naturally, he deflects.

“Wanna play?” Benny asks, deciding for now he’s tired of Russian. He’s getting… _twitchy,_ restless, almost anxious with the lack of _chess_ in the past hour. He wonders if she feels it too. He flicks his eyes down towards the board and scattered pieces to the right of the couch.

Beth pauses, taking a moment to pull her eyes and hands away from him to set the second-hand Dostoyevsky book down on her left side, splayed open. Beth had brought it back to the apartment a few days prior during one of her outings where she doesn’t bother to explain where she’s going or when she’ll be back or does Benny want to join her? because she knows without asking that the answer will be no. Not because he doesn’t want to spend time with her (he has a recurring fantasy montage consisting of the two of them wandering Manhattan, Benny pointing out the _real_ landmarks, not the touristy ones, the two of them brushing hands and sharing a bag of roasted peanuts and laughing and kissing and and _and_ ) but because he knows that the more time they spend together, the harder it’ll be for him to let her go. Benny’s no fool, and he’s _certainly_ not a liar, so there’s no possibility of him lying to himself about how far Beth is out of his league. Frankly, it’s kind of laughable.

She is an oasis in a desert of parched men, all desperate to ignore how _thirsty_ they are. Benny can think of at least five other chess players who have confirmed with him their infatuation with Beth Harmon.

Beth’s sliding her feet off Benny’s lap and curling them around and underneath herself gracefully. She hesitates for a fraction of a second before leaning forward, putting their faces parallel to one another; their eyes and lips and noses level albeit a few inches apart. Benny holds his breath automatically. There’s a moment where they just look at each other, trying to see into each other’s minds, before Beth’s mouth twists into a smirk.

“Nyet.”

“No? No chess? That’s not like you, Harmon.”

“Mmmm not in the mood,” she says, dragging out the “m” sound so long he’s certain it must be on purpose, which means that she’s noticed that _he’s_ noticed the way she does that.

“What d’ya mean, you’re not in the mood? You’re always in the mood. It’s fucking chess.”

“I’m offended,” she says, intentionally avoiding the question.

“Why would you be offended?” Benny fires back, equal parts curious and surprised.

“I’m reading a lovely book for you, and you haven’t bothered to pay attention. And now you want to play chess instead? I feel unappreciated. Do you not like my Russian?”

Benny flounders for a moment, unsure how to respond, and Beth strikes, sensing a flaw in his armor.

“Are you thinking about sex, Benny?”

Benny splutters. He’s been caught off guard with no time to prepare, and it doesn’t help that he has nowhere to look besides Beth’s face, close as she is. She grins, lazy and pleased.

It takes a moment, but Benny is finally able to respond: “No. I wasn’t.” It’s the truth.

She pauses, breaking eye contact to ponder his reply. Her head bobs side-to-side slowly as she swerves her line of sight between the two largest cracks in the ceiling above them, perched half on her knees and half on her hands, her back arched in just _that_ way.

“Are you trying to seduce me, Beth?” Benny asks, feinting a smirk. He lets his right hand sneak forward to trace the arch of her closest eyebrow with his thumb, returning the touch she delivered a few minutes earlier. He couldn’t possibly hope to mimic the softness of her delicate fingers, so he doesn’t try. “You know, if you want to sleep with me all you have to do is ask.”

She’s not relinquishing the role so easily, but she does intentionally dodge the question and volleys one of her own across the court instead.

“Why did you sleep with me, the first time? I thought you didn’t want to have sex.”

Benny lets his left hand join his right in holding Beth’s face, thumbs stroking the swell of her cheeks simultaneously. It’s anything but mindless; Benny never wants to do anything besides savor Beth while she’s _here._ Casual touches are out of the question.

“I don’t like living with regrets,” he responds. It’s honest, if a bit too realistic given how he’s holding her face, preciously, tenderly. Lovingly.

“Ah, I see. I was an item on your checklist? I’m assuming the US National Chess Champion would net you quite a few points. A woman, at that! We are a _rare_ breed.”

Her expression doesn’t change, but Benny recognizes the jab as it’s meant to be delivered. She’s trivializing herself; she’s setting Benny up to either blunder or score a point. If he were a lot crueler – and frankly, less far _gone_ – he might have agreed with her, just to win their axiomatic tennis set and gain the advantage for the next round. He doesn’t take the bait, though.

“Beth. Come here, please.”

It’s a ridiculous request, given how close they already are. She conveys this by straightening up and lowering both eyebrows; he capitalizes on her momentum by grasping either of her hips with either of his hands and pulling her forward onto his lap so that their legs are flush, hers straddling his. It’s disconcerting enough for Beth to wheeze something that sounds like a protest and her face to adopt a shocked expression before she can compose herself. Benny doesn’t let her, instead spreading his hand, paddle-like, against the back of her head and pulling her forward and down until their mouths are centimeters apart. He doesn’t kiss her – but he does give her a moment, a very _generous_ moment for Beth a moment to collect herself. Benny congratulates himself for his benevolence.

“Beth,” he breathes into her mouth, low and slow so that it sounds more like mmmBeth because he’s _not_ above using her own tricks against her, “You and I both know that’s not how it is.”

“How is it, then, Benny?” Beth has her eyes closed and her brows furrowed, her hands resting gingerly on either side of his neck. Benny can practically taste her words.

“Come on, Beth. You must… know. You _have_ to know the effect you have on… people.”

Eyes still smashed shut, lips still pressed against his, she gives the tiniest, most imperceptible shake of her head. Benny stills, waits for her to open her eyes: when she opens them finally, honesty meets honesty, and Benny knows she’s being sincere. He can see the vulnerability, the way Beth’s telling him without words that she doesn’t want to talk about this. He knows without needing to test the waters that there’s no point in patching her ego. She doesn’t want it, and he respects her too much to try.

“Why did you sleep with me, Benny?” Beth is unsatisfied with the answer she’s already gotten, clearly. Benny knows this is his only remaining chance to give her the right answer, so he takes his time thinking about how to say _you infatuate me_ without actually saying it because Beth is skittish as an alley cat and he would rather swallow his feelings than risk her running away.

He captures her left hand in his right and brings it to his face, pressing Beth’s lovely, soft, feminine hand onto the curve of his face using his own larger hand as a guide. His other hand is tangled as can be in the hair above the nape of her neck, the pressure keeping their lips close enough to kiss – but still, Benny doesn’t kiss her.

“There’s only one thing that’s ever really mattered, at least to me. I think… You probably know what it is, because I think it’s the same for you.”

Beth nods. Her nose bumps his.

“I was ready to live a life where chess was the only thing that mattered. Fine with it, really. And honestly, that hasn’t changed. It always will be the most important thing. But, you… You’re the first person – I think probably the _only_ person – who has changed the way I see the game.

“The fact that you could just waltz in, change everything like that – it makes you really powerful. Like, it’s a little bit frightening with how powerful that makes you.” He clears his throat nervously, but it ends up coming out as more of a half-cough. He and Beth are pressed so closely together that he feels her startle minutely against his mouth. “I just… I knew that I needed to get as close as I could to that power. Even once. I knew that I would spend the rest of my life, angry with myself, for not trying.”

He can feel her slight smile against his lips and knows in that moment that he’s given a satisfactory answer, so he kisses her, finally, finally, _finally._ With Beth, every kiss has to count, which is to say that he’s started counting them. This is the second one today, the first being a very brief, light meeting of her lips to his cheek when he brought her a coffee from the shop at the end of the block when she first woke up. She had flushed and changed the subject immediately to knight middle-game positioning and Benny, always the gracious host, complied without question.

He complies now, letting her roam her fingers through his hair as they kiss indolently, almost casually. Benny likes to think that by now Beth is familiar enough with the shape of his mouth, the movement of his tongue, the way that sometimes he likes to switch things up and move his nose to the other side of hers, even! _Jesus Christ, Watts,_ he thinks to himself now, _you’ve got Beth Harmon in your lap and this is what you’re thinking about?_

Beth disconnects their mouths with a with a filthy-sounding _pap._ “What’s the matter, sourpuss? Frowning again?” She’s teasing, he knows, but her probing has brought her into dangerous territory; she’s way too close to finding out how large her field of gravity has become inside his life. He’s not ready for that conversation – not yet – so instead, he tilts his head up to rest against the concrete wall, looking up into her eyes.

“You’re fucking beautiful, Beth Harmon,” he says instead of anything weightier, though it’s exactly as true.

Beth, as it turns out, is the type of girl who giggles when complimented. Benny never thought he would find _that_ attractive, given how he’s always had a type and it’s a philosophical, complex pessimist with absolutely no sexual hang-ups whatsoever. Beth is complex, true, but she’s also... _girly_ , and maybe a little too elegant with her long, manicured fingers and the fact that she’s bought four new evening gowns since arriving in New York. Benny has never been more (unexpectedly) enamored with another person in his life.

He takes advantage of the fact that her face is pressed into his chest while she laughs by tilting her head farther to the side and sealing his mouth over the skin on the base of her neck, at which point her giggling promptly ceases and morphs into a breathy gasp-squeal hybrid. Benny allows himself to exploit the momentum of the moment by slipping both hands underneath the bottom of her stiff cotton blouse, skittering the pads of his fingertips across the expanse of Beth’s soft stomach. Benny doesn’t know the details of Beth’s sexual history – other than the fact that she’s not _clueless_ – but he does know that the craving he feels for her in this moment is entirely paralleled by the way she arches her back into his palms, the way she softly gasps into the air above his head.

It’s Beth who escalates the situation further – she fumbles hurriedly with the buckle of his belt, apparently in a hurry to get the proverbial show on the proverbial road. Benny laughs softly while he continues the suction-assault on her neck, slipping further and further down the slope of her body with every kiss. It occurs to him that her blouse will soon be unnecessary (though, to be fair, clothing on Beth could always be considered unnecessary), so Benny makes quick work of pulling it off around the same time that Beth wins her battle with his belt and the fly of his jeans.

The apartment around them dissolves into smoky haze as more layers are pulled away, both too quickly and not quickly enough to compete with the smoldering sensation in Benny’s throat – it’s too hot, suffocatingly hot; Benny feels like he might choke and he’s panting into Beth’s mouth and she’s slipping her hand inside the last layer on his body, which is a pair of boxers, and she’s wrapping her hand around him and squeezing and

“Beth.”

“ _What_?” She’s annoyed. Her face and her voice match.

Benny tries to fix it.

“Just… Before, uh, that. Can you tell me, what is it that you want? Tonight. Right now, I mean.”

Beth is positively _glowering._

“What do you mean, _what I want?_ What the _fuck_ do you think I want when I put my hand on your cock?”

Benny tries _harder_ to fix it.

“I mean,” he says, trying desperately to take the most direct approach, “how would you like to, uh, _finish?_ ”

She softens, both in expression and in grip – thank Christ, because she’s still got her hand wrapped around his hard dick. She takes a mere fraction of a second before she’s rising fluidly off his lap and positively _sauntering_ across the apartment towards the bedroom in a fashion that indicates that she knows _exactly_ what she’s doing with her hips, her pointed toes. Beth pauses in the doorframe, her bare ass fully on display, before she flips her hair over her right shoulder and meets Benny’s gaze with an expression that might be described as _demonic._

“Come show me your power, Benny,” she whispers into the empty space between their mouths, despite the fact that she’s ten feet away and before he can think about it he’s on his feet and striding, once, twice, three times and he puts his mouth back where it belongs, which is obviously on hers. He’s got his hands on her neck and he’s positively drinking the air out of her lungs, and he’s pushing her back towards the bed in short steps – once, twice –

There’s a soft _oof_ as she falls onto the sloppily made bed, but this time Benny shows her no mercy and she gets exactly no time to recover because he’s on top of her in a flash, pulling apart her legs with a force that could almost be described as _angry_ before aligning their groins and man, he just fucking _grinds_ his cock up against her wet pussy. Beth has a small shriek perched in her lips, and Benny lets it fall as he thrusts, his face buried in the seam between her neck and shoulder.

“Condom?”

He almost groans, annoyed at having been interrupted but simultaneously grateful that she’s stopped him from coming in a few short seconds – he’s forgotten that he was supposed to make this last.

“Uh, yeah. Hang on.”

There are a few moments of awkward fumbling, Benny half on and half off the bed as he reaches for the box he knows is on the floor, just slightly underneath the bedframe opposite the side that he sleeps on. He can feel and hear Beth shifting below him, and when he returns jubilantly with the metallic wrapper already partially opened, his eyes follow the long line of her arm and hand which is between her legs - _oh fuck._

Benny Watts watches Beth Harmon pleasure herself with raw gratitude, feeling like he’s observing something precious; like she’s giving him a gift. Like she knows that when they inevitably part, _this_ is the moment that he’ll recall most of all when he’s trying to summon the warm, thick feeling in the bottom of his throat that he’s now come to associate with Beth’s presence. _For when you’re lonely,_ she’s telling him, as he takes a mental snapshot and preserves it – the largest of many photorealistic portraits inside the gallery in his head that’s labeled _E. Harmon._

When Beth tips her head back and presses her eyes shut to groan, Benny takes advantage of the fact that her heavy gaze isn’t fixed on him and carelessly rolls on the rubber, probably in record time. When he presses himself back up against her pliant body and realigns their sexes, he can still feel her hand working, like she’s reluctant to stop feeling _good_ even for a second. And fuck, that’s hot, but this is about Benny being in control and he can’t do that while she’s responsible for her own climax, now can he?

Benny reaches down to bat her hand away and replace it with his own, his middle finger stroking the slick wetness between her open legs, and he breathes in the shuddering breath that she’s breathing out right before she whispers _“Fuck me?”_

And that’s all it takes for the shoe to drop, the camel’s back to break, the dam to shatter, because he’s grasping his cock with the hand that’s not clawing at Beth’s hip and using it to steady himself as he slides into her body and makes plans to set up home there.

As far as sex positions go, this one is hardly adventurous – did Benny mention that most of his previous lovers had no sexual hang-ups whatsoever? – but it doesn’t matter, will never matter in the slightest that they’re fucking in _missionary_ because this is probably the best it’s ever been, certainly for him. They’re both stone-cold sober but Benny imagines Beth as an intravenous drug; she’s claimed her rightful place inside his veins and he knows he’ll spend the rest of his life chasing that fix. They’ve got their mouths pressed together, as people are wont to do mid-coitus, but no kisses are being exchanged, just air. Benny wrenches one of his hands out from under her smooth back to wrap it in the coils of her pretty red hair and he _yanks_ her head back as he thrusts, faster now, while his teeth graze the outline of her trachea and she _screams._

“Ty vse,” Benny whispers into her skin, and Beth is coming, falling into that lovely abyss but not before she forcibly clutches Benny and pulls him with her, and _fuck_ the abyss metaphor because his orgasm hits him like a goddamned freight train.

Realistically, it’s probably nearly a minute before either of them catches their breath, but it feels like much longer than that. Post-orgasm, Benny expects himself to feel less attached, more composed like how he normally feels after, but belatedly realizes that this is _Beth_ and if anything he feels like impersonating an octopus and wrapping himself around her with the intention of holding on.

“Can you, uh...?”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry.”

It takes a minute to disentangle their sweaty limbs - their skin unenthusiastic about separating, evidently – before Benny is pulling out of her and sliding off the condom so he can tie it up and dispose of it. All the while, he’s watching Beth out of his periphery – waiting for her to roll over on her side and doze off like she has every other time they’ve done this.

Curiously, though, she’s watching him with a clarity that he wouldn’t have expected for the late hour, especially given their recent, er, activities. He rejoins her on the bed, copying her position in reverse – Beth’s lying on her side, one arm pillowed under her head, the other limply spread a few inches in front of her body. He’s tempted to join their hands, but decides against it, just complementing her stare with his own. Pound for pound, inch for inch, they’re evenly matched.

(Benny can’t help but think it: they make a really good pair.)

Neither of them speaks for a good, long while. The room – or maybe just Benny’s skin – starts to cool down in the wake of the moment. His heartrate is returning to normal. Still, Beth just looks at him, and he at her.

It’s Beth who speaks first. “There was a boy. In Lexington.”

Benny holds his breath, hoping that she’s not going to follow up with “I’m in love with him still” or “He was way better in bed than you.”

“We took Russian together, at the Junior College. Honestly, I don’t think I could tell you his name if you asked.”

“What was his name, Beth?” Benny teases, trying to determine her mood. She takes it in good stride, just barely flicking her eyes upwards before continuing.

“I asked him once why he was learning Russian. We were both stoned. He, uh” – she exhales a laugh – “told me it was because he wanted to read Dostoyevsky, quote, ‘in the original.’ And then,” she laughs again, “he had the audacity to hit on me. Do you want to know what he said?”

“Yes,” says Benny. Automatically.

“ _Mne nravitsya tvoya figura_.”

“How romantic.”

“It wasn’t. He was my first.”

Simultaneously, it both makes more and less sense that Beth has been so insistent on reading _Crime and Punishment,_ or _Prestupleniye i Nakazaniye._

“Why are you telling me this, Beth?” It’s too intimate for games. The complexities and competing power dynamics that are a hallmark of their banter don’t belong in this moment.

Beth shifts and looks at the wall behind him, and Benny recognizes the body language of someone who is uncomfortable, or perhaps a bit anxious. He doesn’t press; he lets her take her time in deciding how to answer.

It takes a few minutes before Beth speaks again. “I think maybe… it’s time that I start tying up some loose ends. I feel like I leave too much behind. Like I become more… _shattered._ Every time I leave a piece of myself somewhere that I’m never gonna return.”

It’s by far and away the most honest thing she’s ever said to him. Benny has no idea what to say, but he decides to once again meet her honesty with his by acting on the instinct to pull her close. He tucks Beth’s head under his chin; his arms snake around her waist so that their stomachs are pressed together, her soft breasts tucked against his chest. 

“Mne nravitsya tvoya figura,” he whispers into her scalp, echoing the words of the nameless boy from Russian class, and she laughs, and Benny is able to admit to himself that maybe – just maybe – he’s not _just_ obsessed with the way she plays chess. Maybe chess has nothing to do with it. Maybe Benny’s just obsessed with _her_.

**Author's Note:**

> The Russian should be technically correct, but I'm still learning, so apologizes to actual Russian speakers if it sounds awkward!
> 
> Ty slushayesh? = are you listening?  
> Nyet, ya dumal = no, I was thinking  
> Pochemu khmurish'sya? = why are you frowning?  
> Nichego ne sluchilos = nothing is wrong  
> Nyet = no  
> Ty vse = you are everything  
> Mne nravitsya tvoya figura = verbatim the phrase used in episode 3 (maybe 4?) which directly translates to "I like your figure," but in the show Beth hears it as "you really like the shape of me" from the fuckboy
> 
> I knew immediately when I saw this show that I needed to exorcise it out of my system somehow, so here is the result. I'm planning a trilogy of one-chaptered works that are all set within the same week of the show, approximately.
> 
> I was really hoping to convey a softer side of both of these characters. Let me know if it worked!
> 
> ETA: [Here](https://ficbook.net/readfic/10117052) is a translation into Russian by the lovely Sonia! Spasibo, zvezda moya.


End file.
